MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry

Vivendi’s failure to court interest in Activision could lead the way to a dramatic new outcome – an MBO spearheaded by boss Bobby Kotick. Activision has hired JP Morgan to advise on a possible buyout of Vivendi’s 60 per cent stake. The group would need to raise in the region …

Ubisoft has reported a significant increase in earnings for the past quarter, thanks in large part to the sales of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. The company announced a 27 per cent increase in earnings for Q1 of its current fiscal year ending June 30th, 2012. Revenue for Ubisoft during the …

EA, Zynga, and Microsoft, along with a host of other companies, have banded together against the Defense of Marriage act. The three gaming entities joined many other US companies in signing an official document stating their opposition. The 1996 federal law defines marriage as being between one man and one …

Jagex’s long-running, massively popular MMO RuneScape is perhaps even more popular than we thought. The developer has announced their free-to-play MMO now boasts over 200m registered users from more than 150 countries since its launch in 2001. In that time users have logged some seven billion hours of playing time. …

Micosoft has announced fiscal results regarding the fiscal quarter ending June 30th, 2012. Although the company brought in a record of $18.06bn in revenue (compared to $17.37bn for the same quarter in 2011), it posted a net loss of $492m due to a ‘goodwill impairment charge’ of $6.2bn. The charge …

Industry giants campaigning against Federal law preventing same-sex marriage

Publisher sets up three-year initiative to support multi-platform development

Online sales jump by 127 per cent to offset falling retail revenues

Pottinger joined by ex-Robot Entertainment programmer John Evanson and former id Software artist Jason Sallenbach

Marketing director Alan Duncan has left SCE UK after almost 13 years at the platform holder. Duncan began his career in the games industry at GT Interactive in 1998, but joined Sony a year later as product manager. He then moved up to marketing manager and then marketing director, a …